How tempting is it to go it alone? The American spirit celebrates the individual and treats achievements as if they were all self obtained. So each one of us has a little something in us that makes us want to be a trailblazer. We’ll look at someone doing something with ease and skill and think emphatically to ourselves, “I can do that.”

I’ve done it myself. I’ve seen a furnace put into a buddy’s rental property and after it was said and done, I thought I knew a few things about installing furnaces. I’ve tackled small plumbing jobs around the house on my own. I have even given myself a haircut. I have had varying degrees of success with each endeavor. I won’t go into details. But I will say that my degree of success was highly correlative to the amount of time and effort I put into practicing and studying the endeavor prior to attempting it which was very little.

I am a true believer that anyone, given enough time and the right tools, can learn to do anything. The question becomes, should anyone do anything. The answer is probably no. [Read more →]

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Shameless Plug

Benjamin Taylor is President of Brick Financial Management, LLC an investment advisory firm specializing in implementing highly focused stock, bond, and balanced portfolios. Ben also shares his views on the investment landscape at The Third Pig blog.

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